


Way Down We Go

by sufferingtime



Category: Logan (2017) - Fandom, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Wolverine (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angry Logan, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Memory Loss, My knife father is full of pain, Post-X-Men: Days of Future Past, Pre-Logan, Sad, Sad Ending, Sad Logan, Seizures, Sick Charles, Timelines are all messed up, X Mansion, everything is bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 08:39:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10408248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sufferingtime/pseuds/sufferingtime
Summary: A traumatic one shot account of the fate of the X-Men and the intervening years between X-Men: DOFP and the events of Logan.  Alone and trying to cope with being the last one standing, Logan struggles to understand what happened and come to terms with how to move on.





	

Logan couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think, couldn’t see, didn't know what was going on. He struggled, blacking out and coming back, knowing his body was barely keeping up with the massive pressure and terrible power of the unseen force keeping him on the ground. It ended abruptly, leaving him shocked and gasping, all of his senses hyperaware. The carpet scraped his hands as he lay on it, recovering, trying to remember what happened. His mind must have been damaged too severely; his memories hadn’t survived the rapid healing. He stayed where he was, a sick feeling in his stomach. He’d lost his memories a few times before, always following a trauma so massive that his healing factor intervened and banished the experience from his body and brain alike. Sometimes he never knew what had happened. But a lingering fear told him that this time, the moment he opened his eyes, he’d know more than he wanted to.

They were all dead. When he finally got to his feet, he stumbled past body after body, shouting names until his voice was diminished to a whisper. Each pulse he checked, each blank face he saw, broke him further. He could barely breathe. The sound of one weak voice calling to him was all that stopped him from losing consciousness again.

“Logan.” Charles’s voice was hollow. Logan entered the office and saw the Professor, splayed out on the floor, trembling. His arm was extended towards Storm’s body, gently holding her hand.

“Professor.” Logan sank down beside him.

“Did anyone…?”

Logan shook his head. He felt heavy, like he’d never move again. Time had slowed. He watched a tear roll sideways from Charles’s eye, traveling over the bridge of his nose and dropping to the rug. The time would come to ask what had happened, but all Logan would do for hours was stare blankly at the wall and struggle to keep the devastating thought from his head: they were alone now.

\---------

The house was immaculate. Not a single stain, not a scratch on the white marble surfaces. Logan couldn’t bring himself to care that his shoes were leaving scuff marks on an otherwise perfectly reflective floor. He twisted his hands around the handles of Charles’s chair. The professor had aged perceptibly in the span of a few days. He hadn’t spoken a word, and his shrunken posture made him look every day of his eighty seven years.

Footsteps echoed down the stairs. “Hello?”

Logan strained to see their host. The man he was here to see wouldn't know who he was, and likely wouldn't be keen on helping them, but time was of the essence. He spoke brusquely. “James Hill, right? Or do you prefer Leech?”

The footsteps stopped. “How did you know that?”

“Let's just say we've met before.”

“If you know who I am, you’ll forgive me for not coming closer.”

“That’s exactly what I want you to do.” Logan pushed Charles forward. He’d worked hard to find this man. Like most mutants now, Leech had his real identity buried under enough aliases and backstories to make the idea that he is anything other than an everyday citizen a ridiculous prospect. But Logan had always known more than he should have, known things that hadn't happened for anyone else. He’d seen pasts that never took place, futures that would never occur. And he could vividly remember the little boy, Jimmy, locked up on an island lab, his body being used to create a cure the world hadn’t wanted. “I know what you can do.”

“What do you want with me?” There was a hint of panic in his voice now.

“Your help.” Logan slowed his approach. “My mind regenerates at a speed too fast for everything to keep up. I’ve lost something I need to get back.”

The man’s pale face came into view. “You’re the Wolverine.”

“Listen, I don’t mean to sound rude, but I'm not in the mood for introductions. We’re in danger.”

“The X-Mansion… the attack?”

Logan nodded. “So you’ve been watching the news.”

He advanced down the stairs. “Is it true? All the X-Men — gone?”

“All but us.” Logan closed his eyes. He couldn’t think about this now. If he did, he didn’t know if he could stay on the fury-driven path he’d forced himself down for the last few days.

“They said it was a terrorist attack. Some sort of mutant power. Like a bomb, but it left no traces.” Leech’s eyes were widening. “You — you have to leave.”

“And we will, gladly. But first, I need you to help us. If you can take on my healing factor, my memories might come back. Once I know what did this, I can kill it.” He took a deep, steadying breath. Killing wouldn’t be enough, but it would have to do.

“I can’t help you.”

“Why not? It’s my understanding that all you have to do is stand close enough to me to absorb my powers. That’s not exactly difficult.” Logan was nearing his breaking point. He pushed Charles out of the way. If things had to get violent, they would.

Leech backtracked. “I’m sorry, if they find out I helped — ”

“Fucking coward.” Logan grabbed the railing and swung himself over, landing a few steps beneath Leech, who scrambled away. He wasn’t fast enough. Logan sank his claws into the man’s leg, and the dribble of blood splattered the clean stairway. Immediately, Logan felt something being drawn from him, like a long exhale after holding his breath. He shuddered at the feeling, felt a stabbing pain where his claws tore through his skin, and knew it was working. The healing his body had done began to unravel. First to reappear were minor injuries he’d sustained on his none-too-bloodless trip to find the mutant, and his blood fell in thick drops to the ground. He gritted his teeth against the pain, and was hit with a wave of blackness.

He dragged himself back from the very edge of unconsciousness. Leech was on the top of the stairs, clutching his leg and breathing hard. Charles hadn’t stirred, hadn’t even looked their way. Logan’s wounds were closing one by one, leaving nothing but bloodstains.

He remembered now. He remembered standing in Charles’s office, arguing with Storm. It was a petty disagreement over class curriculums, and Charles had barely been able to get a word in edgewise. “Please, you two, you're giving me a headache,” he had complained, like a tired parent silencing his children. And then he’d cried out, and Storm had reached out for him, and a wave of unbearable pain threw them both back. Logan had weaved in and out of consciousness, watched Charles fall from his chair and convulse on the floor, felt pulses of pure destructive energy spread like ripples through the mansion. He’d crawled and pulled students with him, going as far as he could before his body gave in and his mind abandoned him.

The house was silent. Logan turned and made his way down the stairs. Charles was finally looking at him. “Charles,” he choked. He didn’t have the words that would explain this, the words to make this right. He knew that Charles had seen what he had, had been inside his head as he watched the deaths of all the innocent people he’d grown to think of as family. When he looked at Charles, he was watching the death of the professor. Charles’s eyes were blank. He was nothing but an old man now, the weight of the guilt so impossible to comprehend that he chose instead to lose himself to it.

\---------

The fallen water tower was what made Logan pull over. He’d thought at first that he’d just drive, go as far south as immigration would let him, and then think about what to do next. But the empty desert just past the border was a grimly perfect place to stop. He examined the broken down warehouse and the water tower, and thought about how Magneto kept Charles out of his head. Perhaps a structure like this could keep Charles contained inside his own mind.

It was slow work to build something habitable out of such a hopeless place. Logan didn’t know why he did it. He bought supplies and furniture for the man who’d killed his whole family and made them both fugitives. He condemned himself to isolation for the rest of his life, even as his own health failed and he tried to ignore the fact that he was no longer sure that he’d outlive Charles. 

The medicine helped. The seizures didn’t stop, but they weren’t as intense. Logan didn’t know if it was the disease or the drugs that pushed Charles into senility, but it came as a miserable blessing to them both. The morning that Charles woke up and asked Logan where they were and why they weren’t at the mansion, Logan’s first thoughts had been ones of envy. If only he could be lucky enough to not know what had brought them there.

\---------

It had been two years, and somehow it did get easier. Logan had doubted he’d ever have a daily routine, but there he was, earning pocket money with a limousine and coming back to take care of the man who despised him for keeping him captive. It’s wasn't much of a life.

Charles had his lucid moments. “Good days”, Caliban called them, as if that meant something anymore. He never remembered what had happened, making Logan wonder if his brain might have a little bit of the healing factor that had kept Logan free of the truth for those first couple of days.

Logan began to lose the battle with his own body. He aged alongside Charles, becoming a withered version of himself. He didn’t know why this concerned him so little until one day he realized that he welcomed it. An end was a gift for someone who’d seen too much death and pain to have any reasonable desire to move on and see more of it. The same night that the thought occurred to him, he found himself unable to sleep.

He sat up, rubbing his forehead. His room was hot and uncomfortable, dirt from the endless sandy winds always finding its way into the floorboards and the mattress, grainy dust settling into his hair and coating his skin. He hated the desert, he really did. He found himself absentmindedly thumbing through the debris on his desk. Old photos, things he was working on, things he’d left there out of an unwillingness to throw them away. The moonlight made everything black and white. He slid open the drawer and a little metal cylinder rolled to the front and knocked gently on the wood. He picked up the bullet and turned it over in his fingers. A physical memory, a piece of his history he’d kept so he’d remember what he was, and that he was never truly invincible.

An offhand sort of thought creeped into his head. He kept a gun under his pillow, loaded with regular bullets. He had never liked guns, but he also didn’t trust the empty silence of the desert, and he could barely depend on his ailing body anymore. He’d never before fought with anything but his claws. Maybe it was time to try something different.

He examined the gun for a long time, unloading it and leaving it empty, setting each metal bullet in a careful line on the desk. He cleaned it, his mind empty of any thoughts, any misgivings. His hands moved like they were controlled by something else. The gun was perfectly operational, and that gave him a very strange feeling of relief.

His fingers rolled the adamantium bullet back and forth, back and forth. Moonlight caught the surface and reflected onto his face, a line of light dancing over his skin. The only thing he could think — _why not?_

The adamantium clinked as he loaded the gun. The sound of the safety snapping off was louder than he thought it would be in the perfect stillness. He sat for a few more seconds. He was waiting for something to kick in, a survival instinct, fear, a moral objection, even just logic, but nothing did. Calmness was all he could feel, and it felt like an answer to a question he hadn’t dared to ask himself.

But his fingers froze.

_Don’t._

The voice, silent in his head, wasn't his own. “Charles?” he asked, speaking into the darkness.

_Logan. Why are you doing this?_

“Get out of my head, Charles.”

_Put it down._ The command was followed by Logan’s hand opening, dropping the gun with a thump on the mattress.

“I thought you didn’t like to control people.”

_I won’t let you hurt yourself._

“I wasn’t — ”

_Don’t bother. I’m inside your head._

“Then you better tell me what you’re seeing, because there’s something I’m missing. Why the fuck is this the best option for me?”

_You know I don’t know that._

“Does that mean I don’t know it either?”

_Logan. I can’t control you forever. But this isn’t the right choice to make._

“Bullshit it isn’t.”

_Please. We’ve lost enough._

“And whose fucking fault is that?” He’s shaking with rage now. He can’t move, a prisoner to Charles’s wishes, but if he could, he thinks he just might go out there and rip apart the professor, tear him limb from limb with his claws, give him every bit of what he deserves. The red-hot anger swells, and Logan realizes he can move. He stands and paces, panting, his claws ripping through his skin. He takes a deep breath. No. It’s not Charles’s fault. “Charles? I’m sorry.” There’s no response, and Logan doesn’t want one. He slides the gun under the bed. By tomorrow, both of them will have forgotten what happened, though only one of them will have suppressed the memory on purpose.

\---------

He was bleeding. He has bled before, lost more blood than any one person can, and done it again and again. But this blood was not stopping, and this pain didn’t fade. He knew what was happening, although he’d never experienced it before. He wondered if everyone knows instinctively when they’re dying.

Laura was there. “Daddy,” she whispered. He didn’t know how the word could give him so much peace, but it did. He was not healing, but it didn’t matter. He knew he’d die when he injected the serum. He didn’t regret it. His last few minutes had given the new mutant generation the escape they needed, and it was enough for him. His breath rattled and he knew he didn't have much time left.

“Don't be what they made you,” he told her. His daughter. The world’s next mutant. She'd bring the hope that the X-Men had once gave to the world, and this more than anything comforted him. He wasn't leaving the world as the last trace of a bygone era, but watching it be resurrected before his eyes.

The dawn brought a blue haze to the trees. He watched the slow moving clouds, the path of a flock of birds passing overhead. He didn't mind dying here. Laura cried at his side, and he wanted to tell her it's all right, but he's fading so quickly now. His eyes fluttered. “So this is what it feels like,” he murmured. His eyes were on the trees, on his daughter, on the flat open sky as he took his last breath and gave himself up at last.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry I just had to process my emotions over this movie


End file.
